Looking Back
by NotAnOrdinaryBoy
Summary: This story is my take on what happens while Amy and Rory take a trip to celebrate their honeymoon. It is a sequel to 'Vincent and The Doctor'. And yes, I turned this story in as a paper for Art Appreciation. Is there anything wrong with that?


Looking Back

The line in front of the Museum of Modern Art had not moved in over an hour. This was something that was not sitting well with Amy Pond. And YES, it was Amy POND, not Amy Williams. Just as her husband, who stood next to her trying best to comment on her fidgeting, was still Rory Williams and not Rory Pond. While they had been very excited in their choice of making New York City their Honeymoon destination, they had not taken into account that they would be doing battle with mobs of school children at their every touristy turn.

"And tell me again why we are here?" Rory asked when the screaming from a nearby group of students began for the fifth time in less than ten minutes. "Surely you would rather go somewhere that we can actually get into." Rory quickly moved forward in order to avoid being struck by a flying shoe that had originated from another of the groups of minors nearby. "Or perhaps somewhere with a Minimum Age for Entrance."

"We are going in. Look at it this way, if we stay here long enough, we might see some Ghostbusters." With a wink to her husband, Amy eagerly began checking to the front of the line. "Besides, one of Vincent's paintings is in there, and I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Vincent? Who's Vincent?" Rory asked. He was sure if his wife had known someone who was a painter, he would have known by now. He had learned about her imaginary friend from childhood on their third date, although that friend had turned out to be very corporeal. "You never told me about anyone painting. Are you talking about Vinnie from down at the Pub?"

"No, not Vinnie from the Pub you silly, _Vincent Van Gogh_."

Rory looked at Amy fully now. It took him a minute to realize that she had actually said a last name. The sound that came out of her mouth sounded more like she was in the process of choking on a piece of food. Perhaps it was the Scottish in her. They were all about their Lochs and things.

"Do you mean Vincent Van Gogh?" Rory asked, using the pronunciation that had been engrained into him all throughout his school days. "You know, like Van Gogh? Gogh? Geaux? Go?"

This comment brought an eye roll into Rory's direction from Amy's brown eyes. She quickly saw someone passing out brochures to the Museum, and she quickly stepped to take one of them. Flipping through the pages, Amy partially returned her focus to her husband. "I said Gogh." Amy choked out once more. "It's the way that he pronounced it, so it's the way I am going to as well." A smile curled at the edge of Amy's mouth, as a memory passed through.

"The way _he_ pronounced it?" Rory said flabbergasted, "You never told me that you met Van Gogh? When was this? Where was I?" Rory wasn't fond of finding out about secrets. One of the things that he had always prided their relationship on was the fact that they had always been open and honest with each other. Things had been great until the imaginary friend from her childhood returned with his time-travelling blue box and took her away from him the night before their wedding. But that was ok because she had come back to him and they were now happily Mr. and Mrs. Rory Williams (or was it going to be Williams-Pond? Or Pond-Williams? You get the point).

"You were, oh, I don't know… elsewhere. I can't remember now." Amy showed Rory a page of the flyer that she held. "See this one, _The Starry Night_; this is why we are here."

The young man took the pamphlet from his red-headed bride and looked at the photo on the page. It showed an image of a dark painting, with large circular strokes forming the stars in the night sky over a city. "Oh yeah, I've seen this one before. We studied it in A-Levels. Wasn't this the mad man who lopped of his ear before he finally offed himself over a girl?" Rory asked, trying to remember some of the details from a class that he had no doubt slept through.

"Don't talk like that about Vincent. He didn't 'off' himself for anyone." A look of solemnity brought down the features of the normally vibrant girl. "Vincent was sick. And the fact that he was able to paint at all is a miracle."

"Well, I am just saying that I don't understand what it is that makes him so special." Rory said. "I mean, look at this painting for example, the sky is BLUE. Isn't this painting supposed to be a starry NIGHT? Last time I checked, night sky equaled BLACK, not blue." He glanced down at the image again, "And what is with all of the swirling? I mean… it looks more like the ocean than it does the sky. With that poor village lying in wait, this is more like a depiction of what happened at Pompeii than it is a nice quiet night at a village."

At that moment, a cheer from the front of the crowd signaled that the museum had opened, and the front part of the line proceeded to move into the museum. The movement was slowly filtering its way back through the line.

"That is what YOU see; now we are going to look at what I see." Amy smiled, as slowly she and Rory began making their way inside.

Once they were inside, Amy had insisted on making _The Starry Night_ their first stop. Rory had wanted to get two of the tour headset things, but Amy was adamant that it could wait.

As they stood in front of the painting, Rory was able to make out more details that were not clear by the photograph in the flyer. For starters he was impressed that this was an oil painting. What he had taken to be seaweed on the left hand side of the work in the smaller version, he was now able to see were trees. They stood straight up reaching to the heavens, in much the same way that the spire of the church did in the center.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Amy asked. Although you could tell by her actions that she did not expect a response to be coming. She started at the painting, allowing her thoughts to take her back to her time in the presence of the great artist.

"You know, people say that he was mad, but I know that he was one of the most passionate, emotional men that I have ever known." She offered a sideways glance to her husband. "No offense of course.

"None taken" Rory replied.

"I remember I met him for the first time outside of a café," Amy reminisced, "he was being thrown out for being drunk and not paying his bill. He offered to give the Owner a painting in exchange for his tab, but he would have nothing of it. Oh, if only that man knew what he was saying no to." She smiled as the thought played out in her head.

"And the colors," she continued, "Just look at them. There are so few of them, but they blend together so nicely. Where the lights are not quite white, and the darks are not quite black. It's beautiful, and so simple." She smiled again to herself. "You know this is the way he saw life; the universe was a large wondrous thing, and we are just a small part of its beauty".

"But I still don't get the swirls. It just seems a little childlike to me." Rory shuffled his feet. He loved Amy, he really did, but sometimes there were things that he just could not see in the same way that she could. "And why are those trees even there anyway." Rory noted the trees with a certain scrutiny. They were not needed, and indeed they covered most of the left side of the painting.

"They're evergreen. Supposed to mean eternal life, you know… symbolism." Amy poked the young man teasingly in the arm, as a group of children passed and admired the paintings. At that moment a thought struck Amy. She was surprised that she had not thought of it before. "Come on." She grabbed Rory's hand and made for the exit.

"What? Where are we going?" Rory was confused by her fast retreat from the museum after they had tortured themselves to get in.

"Don't worry, you'll understand." She said, and led them both to the EXIT.

It had been difficult to find the perfect hillside that night. Many of them were too close to the lights of the city. They had ended up hiring a car and driving a few hours to get to this spot. Now Amy had them lying on their backs, watching the sunset.

"Remember what you were saying before, about the colors?" Amy asked. She kept her eyes on the night sky, as the last vestiges of the sun settled below the horizon. "About how the night was black and whatnot?"

"Yes."

"Well then tell me what you see."

Rory looked up and took a long time to formulate his answer. "I see the sky."

"OF course you see the sky, but what else do you see." Amy sat for a minute before she decided that the silence coming from her husband was probably indicative of the level of perception that he was experiencing at the moment. "Take the sky itself. That is not black. It's blue. And the stars are not just pinpricks on the sky; they are gas giants burning their way through the atmosphere. And the wind, the wind is moving the atmosphere across. But the trip is not a straight line; it is filled with curls and undulations. "

"And the stars are yellow and gold and flicker like diamonds." Amy was shocked that those words had not come from her, but rather from Rory. She looked over to see how her husband's eyes danced across the sky.

He continued, "And he was able to take oil, and canvas, and make that. With his pain and madness inside him." Rory continued to look at the sky, eyes afire with thoughts of color that he had not seen there before. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the flyer from the museum, and looked at the painting once more. This time he did not see the swirls of impending disaster. Instead, he saw the beauty and majesty of a wonderful world that he was just a small, small part of. He saw the steeple of the church mirroring the tree's own reach to the heavens. And in that moment, he realized that he had truly married the most wonderful woman in the world.


End file.
